Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Capture and Storage

The only direction that anything is going to go with global warming is towards capture and storage.

The hair shirt brigade has to wake and see that the future means more cars, more trucks, more holidays overseas, and more everything. The concept of voluntary simplicity is not going to happen on a large scale and no government is going to force it on us.

The only answer is capture and storage. The task is huge, but it is doable.

The process is a relatively simple one. One would force companies to capture all of their green house gases or pay a fine/fee to have the same amount removed from the atmosphere.

This process would offer a real price to the cost of producing GHGs. A company could decide to either reduce their emissions, capture their emissions or pay the government to capture a like amount of emissions. A market would be created offering options and real world prices for each option - there is no need for a carbon tax.

As Carbon Capture and Storage takes off, the technology to do it will dramatically improve and the costs will fall. The companies best at CCS would get market advantages and make good money.

The government can use the fine/fee as a last case option and thereby set the upper price.

Initially there would be a large cost to develop technologies and build the infrastructure. The first years would likely see high prices for CCS, but these would quickly fall.

The biggest problem will be for produces of methane and other GHGs that have a much higher impact than CO2. Meat production could take a really big hit unless producers figure out how to deal with cow farts. I have heard there is work in Australia being done on a vaccine that is supposed reduce cow farts......